Memorandum submitted by The Joint Committee
for Psychology in Higher Education
1. Psychology is currently the largest undergraduate
science discipline in UK Higher Education. It is also the third
largest overall. Therefore, funding decisions that affect Psychology
have a substantial impact on the sector as a whole.
2. The Joint Committee is the umbrella group
for the three main bodies that represent British Psychology—the
British Psychological Society (with over 44,000 members, including
academics, students and practitioners), the Experimental Psychology
Society (representing over 600 established research scientists),
and the Association of Heads of Psychology Departments (representing
over staff and students in over 100 Departments in Higher Education
Institutions). The Joint Committee welcomes the opportunity to
submit evidence to this inquiry. Given the broad scope of the
inquiry, we have deliberately focused on issues relating to university
funding and the assessment of quality.
3. IS THE
CURRENT FUNDING
SYSTEM FIT
FOR PURPOSE?
IS THE
PURPOSE CLEAR?
3.1 We believe that UK research and teaching,
at least in psychology, continues to suffer from insufficient
long-term support. Our own view is that higher education is properly
built upon a highly intimate link between the processes of research
and scholarship on the one hand; and the activities of learning
and teaching on the other. The challenge will be to preserve that
link, already under pressure in various ways, and likely to be
even more so as universities, in response to the widening participation
agenda, seek to increase the participation rate still further.
3.2 Moreover, the operation of the funding
formula flies in the face of the work that has been done in UK
universities over the last 40 years or so, to ensure that teaching
is research-led. In disciplines such as psychology, development
of research skills is a fundamental part of learning, and a pre-requisite
for professional training. Obtaining a PhD in psychology requires
advanced research skills. A PhD is also a de facto requirement
for becoming a lecturer in psychology in most departments. However,
this seems unsustainable if large numbers of departments will
no longer have the funding (or opportunity) for staff to conduct
research. Ultimately, therefore, although the funding mechanism
is supposed to strengthen UK research and teaching, we think there
is little evidence of this, and furthermore that it is damaging
overall research capacity and teaching.
3.3 In addition, and in particular, we feel
that the assumptions underpinning the current fee-banding for
psychology (under the HEFCE funding method) do not fully reflect
factors that should determine the funding formula.
3.4 The majority of Departments of Psychology
in the UK run undergraduate degree courses that are accredited
by the British Psychological Society. The criteria for this accreditation
require that at least 30% of each year of a typical degree is
taken up with laboratory work, including an independent empirical
research project in the final year. Almost all psychological research
requires human participants, which in turn requires support in
terms of suitably controlled laboratory environments, support
staff and equipment. Thus, the teaching of psychology involves
very significant support in terms of space, personnel, technical
expertise and facilities. Psychology is an intensive laboratory-based
discipline, as well as the fastest growing subject in science.
However many departments are stretched to intolerable levels.
Those that do have substantial research income have to subside
their teaching from research resources—the under-funding
problems needs to be resolved rather than compounded.
3.5 Many of these problems arise from the
dependence of the existing funding models used by both HEFCE and
HE institutions on historical baselines which serves to penalize
expanding disciplines and reward contracting disciplines. It is
our strongly held view that the current HEFCE proposal to try
to identify actual costs using the TRAC system is entirely undermined
by the very low quality of the information that is being fed into
TRAC. Further, even if actual costs could be established, given
the tight linking between the allocation of funds to disciplines
and the HEFCE funding model, relying on these would still perpetuate
historical funding levels. A way needs to be found to develop
a funding model that responds effectively to both needs and demands.
4. SHOULD RESEARCH
QUALITY BE
BASED ON
SELECTION OF
"QUALITY"? HOW
SHOULD QUALITY
BE DEFINED
AND ASSESSED?
HOW MIGHT
THIS DRIVE
BEHAVIOUR ACROSS
THE SECTOR?
4.1 We do not object, in principle, to the
policy of assessing the quality of research. The RAE provides
an important quality mark for UK research. However, the arbitrariness
of the funding formula applied following the RAE has resulted
in strong perceptions of injustice and in highly unproductive
forms of labelling that create self-fulfilling prophecies in terms
of recruitment and performance. The funding formula has also resulting
in very intensive recruitment and the movement between institutions
of research leaders and research role models. For the UK research
as a whole, this is a very expensive process and it is questionable
whether it produces any noticeable benefit. Indeed it seems likely
to deplete the research capacity of the many smaller and less
powerful departments. By fostering this movement of highly experienced
and outstanding researchers into a smaller number of departments
and institutions, the funding formula separates teaching and research
so that the latter can take place in fewer locations. Ultimately,
we believe this will weaken the teaching of psychology nationally,
and consequently our capacity to produce UK trained scholars with
sufficient nationally required research skills and international
excellence in terms of originality and diversity.
4.2 It also results in discriminatory funding
such that excellent researchers in departments with lower RAE
ratings receive less financial support for their research than
researchers of equal stature in departments with higher ratings.
In practice, those lower status departments have much higher teaching
loads and student numbers, making it less and less possible to
conduct high quality research. Since there is quite a lot of movement
of staff immediately before and between RAEs (eg hiring of new
staff to match changing student numbers), this means that the
funding mechanism privileges some individuals on bases that are
largely independent of the quality of their own research. It seems
likely that less mobile individuals, and those whose work is tied
by geographical location (such as people with families, dependents
and also scholars whose research does not fit a mainstream category)
are disadvantaged by this system. The consequence is likely to
be inefficiency and inaccuracy in the delivery of research support,
and unplanned loss of capacity in potentially important areas
of research.
4.3 Even if it were possible to justify
the denial of research resources for `national' level research
(eg currently in departments rated 3 or below), the continuing
increase in the funding differential between 4 and 5 rated departments
seems hard to defend on rational grounds. Schools do not invest
all their best teachers only in the pupils who already excel,
and schools that produced a performance cliff would certainly
be castigated for doing so. Yet the rationale for selective funding
of research has just such an effect. Departments rated 4 certainly
include international quality research. If the aim was to bring
about improvements in UK research it could easily be argued that
the most effective targeting of additional resources would be
to the 4 rated departments rather than those that were already
performing at a uniformly high level. There is a further downside
to RAE outcomes, namely the stigmatization of large numbers of
units of assessment and their members. The increasingly selective
distribution of research funding and the political agenda to concentrate
research funds into fewer pockets sends the misleading, message
that an increasing proportion of UK departments and universities
are producing work that is not worthy of international respect.
Of course if this message is in fact accurate it would be a testament
to the failure of the funding algorithms used following previous
RAEs.
4.4 We believe the aim of the research assessment
process ought to be to recognise excellence in research—whether
it is produced by individuals, groups, departments or institutions.
We believe that the selection of funding is best achieved by rewarding
excellent research wherever and whenever it appears, but not on
the basis of categorisations applied at arbitrary levels of abstraction—namely
Units Of Assessment (UOAs). To illustrate this point, it seems
likely that a University in which nearly a quarter of research
staff were internationally outstanding could have massively different
RAE outcomes, public profile, and possibly HEFCE funding depending
on the combination of the funding algorithm and whether all of
these staff were concentrated in just a quarter of its UOA's or
evenly distributed across all of the its UOAs. Thus, although
the total proportion of excellent research would be the same,
the system of awarding RAE ratings and the funding received and
esteem accorded to the University could be radically different.
Any new system needs to rectify this type of anomaly.
4.5 In conclusion, we urge that the issues
of the types of indicator used, the context in which they are
placed, the level of categorization at which they are applied
and the funding algorithms that follow all should be given greater
consideration in the development of future RAE methodologies.
We hope that these comments stimulate further
consideration of the strategic aims of the funding mechanism as
well as deeper consideration of its likely consequences. We hope
that any future funding arrangements strengthen rather than undermine
the national foundation for substantial disciplines such as psychology
that are rooted firmly in research led teaching.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
— Psychology is currently the largest
undergraduate science discipline in UK Higher Education. It is
also the third largest overall. Therefore, funding decisions that
affect Psychology have a substantial impact on the sector as a
whole.
— We believe that UK research and teaching,
at least in psychology, continues to suffer from insufficient
long-term support.
— The link between teaching and research
is essential and must be strengthened and preserved.
— The operation of the funding formula
flies in the face of the work that has been done in UK universities
over the last 40 years or so, to ensure that teaching is research-led.
— Although the funding mechanism is
supposed to strengthen UK research and teaching, we think there
is little evidence of this, and furthermore that it is damaging
overall research capacity and teaching.
— The assumptions underpinning the
current fee-banding for psychology (under the HEFCE funding method)
do not fully reflect factors that should determine the funding
formula.
— Psychology is an intensive laboratory-based
discipline, as well as the fastest growing subject in science.
However many departments are stretched to intolerable levels.
Those that do have substantial research income have to subside
their teaching from research resources—the under-funding
problems needs to be resolved rather than compounded.
— Many of these problems arise from
the dependence of the existing funding models used by both HEFCE
and HE institutions on historical baselines which serves to penalize
expanding disciplines and reward contracting disciplines. A way
needs to be found to develop a funding model that responds effectively
to both needs and demands.
— We do not object, in principle, to
the policy of assessing the quality of research. The RAE provides
an important quality mark for UK research. However, the arbitrariness
of the funding formula applied following the RAE has resulted
in strong perceptions of injustice and in highly unproductive
forms of labelling that create self-fulfilling prophecies in terms
of recruitment and performance.
— We believe the aim of the research
assessment process ought to be to recognise excellence in research—whether
it is produced by individuals, groups, departments or institutions.
— We believe that the selection of
funding is best achieved by rewarding excellent research wherever
and whenever it appears, but not on the basis of categorisations
applied at arbitrary levels of abstraction—namely Units
Of Assessment (UOAs).
— We urge that the issues of the types
of indicator used, the context in which they are placed, the level
of categorization at which they are applied and the funding algorithms
that follow all should be given greater consideration in the development
of future RAE methodologies.
January 2007
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